Sensory Acuity

We use our senses to get around in the world unfortunately for much of the time we aren’t really paying attention and our senses are running on autopilot. To be effective in NLP you will need to learn to improve your sensory acuity.

What is Sensory Acuity?

Our perception of the world around us, the people we meet and the events in our lives is produced by the collection of information that we gather through our senses. Our judgement of a particular person will be created from what we see, hear, smell and feel from our interaction with that person.

At every moment of our lives we are bombarded with sensory stimuli, and the only way that we can really cope with the world is by turning down the intensity of the signals being sent to the brain. We dampen down what we see and hear, what we taste and feel, what we smell and touch. To do otherwise leads us to sensory overload which over time puts significant stress on our minds and bodies.

Sensory Acuity is the process whereby we start to lower the filters on our senses and make a conscious effort to take notice of what we are taking in through our senses. Rather than turning the world around us down to a background noise, we start paying attention. We make the choice to notice when someone speaks in a different tone, or moves in an odd way, we move in to Uptime when we are around people and pay close attention to what is happening around us.

At its core Sensory Acuity is the act of paying close attention to what is happening within your interaction with others. It requires significant retraining, an unlearning of old habits, to really notice what is going on. Raising ones sensory acuity will enhance your ability to act (rather than react) to the event in your world.

Many of the patterns within NLP use a technique known as Perceptual Positions to be effective, the...

About the author

Lee Avery

Professional Therapist, Clinical Hypnosis & NLP Trainer with over 25 years of experience in training new professionals and treating clients. He specialises in Trauma related Psychological health issues. After years of running training classes Lee has decided to publish his training materials online to further the accessibility of NLP and Hypnosis. He is an advocate for Clinical Hypnosis Excellence and is constantly looking to improve the professional standing of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy within the medical community.

He also runs Achieving Greatness a software development company producing mobile apps for the mental health community.